"Oh, north."

"What for?"

"Work. Please don't question me. I'd rather you wouldn't."

She pondered a moment.

"Are you--what they call a--workingman?" she presently resumed.

"Yes," said he. "Why?"

"And are you happy?"

"Yes. In a way. Or shall be, when I've done what I mean to do."

"But--forgive me--you're very poor?"

"Not at all! I have, at this present moment, more than eighteen dollars
in my pocket, and I have _these_!"

He showed her his two hands, big and sinewed, capable and strong.

"Eighteen dollars," she mused, half to herself. "Why, I have spent that,
and more, for a single ounce of a new perfume--something very rare, you
know, from Japan."

"Indeed? Well, don't tell _me_," he replied. "I'm not interested in how
you spend money, but how you get it."

"Get it? Oh, father gives me my allowance, that's all."

"And he squeezes it out of the common people?"

She glanced at him quickly.

"You--you aren't a Socialist, into the bargain, are you?" she inquired.

"At your service," he bowed.

"This is strange, strange indeed," she said. "Tell me your name."

"No," he refused. "I'd still rather not. Nor shall I ask yours. Please
don't volunteer it."

Came a moment's silence, there in the darkening hut, with the fire-glow
red upon their faces.

"Happy," said the girl. "You say you're happy. While I--"

"Are not unhappy, surely?" asked Gabriel, leaning forward as he sat
there beside her, and gazing keenly into her face.

"How should I know?" she answered. "Unhappy? No, perhaps not. But
vacant--empty--futile!"

"Yes, I believe you," Gabriel judged. "You tell me no news. And as you
are, you will ever be. You will live so and die so. No, I won't preach.
I won't proselytize. I won't even explain. It would be useless. You are
one pole, I the other. And the world--the whole wide world--lies
between!"

Suddenly she spoke.

"You're a Socialist," said she. "What does it mean to be a Socialist?"

He shook his head.

"You couldn't understand, if I told you," he answered.

"Why not?"

"Oh, because your ideas and environments and interests and everything
have been so different from mine--because you're what you are--because
you can never be anything else."

"You mean Socialism is something beyond my understanding?" she demanded,
piqued. "Of course, that's nonsense. I'm a human being. I've got brains,
haven't I? I can understand a scheme of dividing up, or levelling down,
or whatever it i